Heirloom seeds and 16mm film embody memory in a becalmed epistolary tour of American experience crafted by Tamer Hassan and Armand Yervant Tufenkian. Read aloud in mellifluous regional accents, letters between "seed-savers" suspend us in a fading vision of an agrarian nation, where generation after generation has handed down and cultivated the same peas, gourds, marigolds, and hyacinths. The places across the United States where Hassan and Tufenkian shot their film over several years – the same origins and destinations for the letters we hear – contain not just timeless farmlands but also cars and railroads of contemporary vintage (as well as, oddly enough, a couple of performers in a historical reenactment). The effect is a kind of secular prayer and a paean to decency and communal duty, as the diversity of the seeds and weathered film stocks feed a soulful sense of continuity that stretches from the 1800s up to now. "It doesn’t seem right to throw away [experience]," one correspondent writes, and in the silences between the letters (passing through states such as Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana), the filmmakers create a space for unhurried contemplation of what lies before us. (Nicolas Rapold)